COMMENT

The content published in this section and the views expressed do not necessarily represent the views of the IPA. Comment is open to all our members, societies and non-members.Please take note of our community standards. Any posts not adhering to these standards will be removed.

You will need to log-in to the IPA website to post a comment. If you do not have a log-in and password, go to 'Sign in' link to create one. If you want to reply to a post, log in, then click on the title link of the post.

Americans are shocked on a daily basis by President Trump’s infantile, narcissistic behavior: his hypersensitivity to criticism and impulsive, retaliatory insults, such as against MSNBC journalists “Morning Joe” Scarborough and Mika Brzezinski, his flagrant lying and grandiose hubris through which he elevates his ego above respect for the responsibility and integrity of the American presidency. His political inattention, poor judgment and ominous self-reliance have resulted in two congressional committees and a special counsel appointed by the FBI investigating him and his campaign for collusion with the Russian government and obstruction of justice, which pundits are comparing to Nixon’s Watergate scandal. Instead of “making America great again,” Trump’s America is rapidly losing its leadership in international affairs. The drumbeat for impeachment grows louder.Read full article

Dr. Gohar Homayounpour is a psychoanalyst and author who belongs to the International and American Psychoanalytic Associations. She lives and works in Tehran.
As an Iranian-Canadian psychoanalyst who has been oscillating between rage and sadness since the beginning of the Trump administration, it is so seductive for me to get emotionally involved, especially after the Muslim ban. This temptation arises as Iranians are separated from their children, or when a friend tells me, “I have just gotten my visa approved to take my thirteen-year-old daughter to New York for cancer treatment. You know, this is how terrorists are made”, or with the thoughts of the shattered hopes of dispossessed refugees and so many others affected by Trump’s new policies.

But I must attempt to keep my analytic attitude, futile as that attempt may be.The moment I get back to my analytic mind, well then, this is where I think things get interesting. These are my associations:

Wasn’t Trump democratically elected? Didn’t millions of people vote for him in the United States? Did he not say exactly what his plans were for America? Did he not specifically say he would have a Muslim ban, anti-immigration and refugee policies? Did he not say that he will build a wall? People kept saying it was just campaign rhetoric.

Is this not reminiscent of Hitler? For God’s sake, he wrote a book saying exactly what he was going to do, discussing his world view in detail. People still voted for him in large numbers.

Professional Ethics are a foundational principle of clinical practice and, according to the philosopher Levinas, of all human relations (Chetrit-Vatine 2014). In this short communication, we will focus on patient confidentiality and case reporting, a subject that has been of recent discussion in both the Ethics Committee and the IPA Board.

In Freud’s (1913) second essay on technique, “On Beginning the Treatment,” where he described the fundamental rule of psychoanalysis - say everything that comes to mind without exception (pp. 134-137) -, he made it clear that nothing was to be exempt from disclosure in the process of free association, noting that:

“It is very remarkable how the whole task [of analysis] becomes impossible if a reservation [to speak one’s thoughts freely and completely] is allowed at any single place. But we have only to reflect what would happen if the right of asylum existed at any one point in a town; how long would it be before all the riff-raff of the town had collected there? I once treated a high official who was bound by his oath of office not to communicate certain things because they were state secrets, and the analysis came to grief as a consequence of this restriction. Psychoanalytic treatment must have no regard for any consideration [that would allow evasion of the basic rule], because the neurosis and its resistances are themselves without any such regard.” (pp. 135-136).

Although unstated in this essay, no doubt Freud, who was a physician and who had taken the Hippocratic Oath, assumed that the analyst had a reciprocal obligation. If the patient was required to tell all without regard for social conventions or personal comfort, then the analyst, like the priest in the confessional, was obliged to hold whatever was told or occurred in the privacy of the consulting room in the strictest of confidence.

Without this safeguard of absolute privacy protection of the patient’s disclosures, psychoanalytic treatment becomes impossible. This principle was upheld in US Federal Court in a famous case (Jaffe vs. Redmond), in which a police officer shot and killed a man who was committing an armed robbery. Although the police officer was found to be operating within the accepted stipulated principles involving the use of force by law enforcement officers, he was nevertheless sued by the deceased robber’s family for a civil rights violation.

Dear Colleagues:
On December 23, 2015, The Board of Directors of my institute, the Institute for Psychoanalytic Training and Research (IPTAR) in New York City issued the following Position Statement on Xenophobia and Islamphobia. This followed a somewhat similar Position Statement on Syrian Refugee Resettlement issued by the American Psychoanalytic Association on December 2, 2015. Our statement is framed clinically. Our Board thought it was important in these perilous times that psychoanalysts in the United States be at the forefront of opposing circumstances that lead to xenophobia, Islamophobia, racism, and prejudice. Psychoanalysts in other parts of the world, given the media stories that come from the United States, may not be familiar with the extent to which psychoanalysts in this country are expressing their views.

Attachments:

I appreciate the statement from the IPTAR board of directors describing the dynamics of xenophobia. Promoting an understanding of the psychological mechanisms that result in what the public refers to as prejudice and how "otherness" reactions are exacerbated by stress is a fundamental approach to diminishing it's harmful effects. Thank You!
Kim Kleinman
member Contemporary Freudian Society

On behalf of the of the British Psychoanalytic Association (BPA) I strongly endorse the recent statement from the President of the British Psychoanalytical Society concerning the referendum vote for the UK to leave the European Union.The result has led to seriously destabilising consequences in the UK, Europe and the wider world and its full implications are not yet clear. The anti immigrant atmosphere which has developed and the recent spate of racist attacks in the UK are to be deplored.Psychoanalysis is an international venture and the background of the members and candidates of the BPA reflects this.The referendum vote will not lead to us turning away from our international colleagues. The BPA will continue as an outward looking Society which places great value in its membership of and participation in the EPF and the IPA and which welcomes members and candidates from throughout the world.Philip RoysPresidentBritish Psychoanalytic Association

I am speaking on behalf of the Executive and Board of the British Psychoanalytical Society consequent to the result of the referendum vote for the United Kingdom to leave the European Union which has sent shockwaves rippling across Europe and indeed internationally. Psychoanalysis was born in Europe and nurtured from its inception by colleagues of many nationalities, initially in Europe and the UK and very soon after in the United States and internationally. That growth has similarly been supported internationally in adjacent disciplines sympathetic to psychoanalytic ideas.

From the earliest days psychoanalysis in the UK has relied upon the creativity and support of European and other colleagues. Our membership and candidates from the beginning have been drawn from an international pool and patients attending the London Clinic of Psychoanalysis come from many countries. Similarly, our small staff team has an international profile.

Here in the UK we value and need these links as bridges in a troubled world and will continue to welcome and offer support to prospective members, candidates and staff according to talent and regardless of country of origin. We are part of the European Psychoanalytic Federation and the International Psychoanalytic Association and we intend to continue working with them both.

As far as we understand the present situation immigration and visa status for those studying, working and receiving treatment here will remain unchanged and that is likely to be the case for some time. We will of course continue to monitor the situation and advise all accordingly.

How can we explain the virulent hatred toward Hillary Clinton from men and women of both political parties? The attacks against her: Benghazi, personal emails, lying, etc., are relatively minor, the usual political scuttlebutt, in contrast to the extreme intensity of her vilification. So many people say they just don’t like her, and this negative impression is not new. Since her role as First Lady in Bill Clinton’s White House, she has been portrayed as a witch, a Lady Macbeth, a ruthlessly ambitious, egocentric woman who considers herself above the law to achieve her exploitative goals. Some see her as a shrieking harpy. As a psychoanalyst, I believe that the intensity of this character assassination is motivated by a largely unconscious misogyny that is deeply rooted in the human (male and female) psyche. It is often triggered in response to a strong, independent woman. But this enmity is especially intense for Hillary, who is emotionally reserved and aggressive in her pursuit of the presidency. (See SNL’s recent hilarious caricatures of these qualities.) ...Read More

2 replies

The vilification of hillary

PostedJuly 23, 2016byLic. Sherry Elizabeth Lupinacci Vigilio

As female psychoanalyst and staunch Bernie Sanders supporter i suggest you do some serious research. This is a very difficult task because nost or all of mainstream press has been purchased in addition to those sgencies and institutions meant to protect Americans and above all democracy

The vilification of Hillary

PostedSeptember 22, 2016byDr. William Earnest

The article illustrates why the great potential for a psychoanalytic contribution to the analysis of political questions has not been realized. Following the reductionist playbook to the letter, the author dismisses any reasons Hillary's opponents might offer and instead jumps to speculatively prioritize the "largely unconscious" question of misogyny. That this debunking maneuver has so many, many times resulted in an equally dismissive debunking response is lost to the author, who appears to be bent on elbowing his way past, for example, Clinton's close alignment with banks responsible for the 2008 crash, or with a right wing government she helped to install in Honduras, or with anti-welfare policies she helped to impose in the 1990s, etc. This is not to say that misogyny might be a principal organizer of some responses to Clinton. But it is to say that psychoanalytic criticism cannot expect to find an audience if it appears that to speak of unconscious motivation means mundane reality is committed to obscurity. This is a cocktail party parody of applied psychoanalysis.

Nilüfer Erdem, Psychoanalyst and member of Psike Istanbul, writes:
"How the actual turbulent situation in Turkey might affect our work as psychoanalysts? This is a question that we are asked more and more frequently in our encounters with colleagues from different parts of the world. I will try to address the question with a few sentences. It is of course difficult and misleading, if not illusory, to pretend that we can draw generalizations about clinical experiences of all psychoanalysts, regardless the analytic situation specific to each cure." Read More

https://www.change.org/p/berna-m%C3%BCk%C3%BCs-freedom-for-academics-for-peace-in-turkey-international-campaign?recruiter=44674827&utm_source=share_petition&utm_medium=copylink.
Nilüfer Erdem compares the Greek tragedy Antigone with recent events in Turkey and proves that human prehistory still has its relevance in the modern world. I was very moved by the descriptions, probably also because I was lucky enough a few years ago to experience the inspiring atmosphere in Gezi Park and the spirit of optimism in the province of Van. Many people I met were interested in art, culture and science and most of them were involved politically. It literally vibrated in the social transitional space - to pick up on an expression by the author. The text taught me that it touches the internal psychic space of the individual when social transitional spaces are under attack. Basic archaic motives are awakened and we are reminded that this affects all of us, regardless of where we live.